Quincy native's mineral specimens on display at Yale museum

Thursday

Jul 27, 2017 at 7:00 AMJul 27, 2017 at 10:31 AM

Quincy native and 1972 Norwell High School graduate Gail Copus Spann and her husband have built a collection of 11,500 mineral specimens, many on loan to David Friend Hall at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

By Valerie Russo/For The Patriot Ledger

Are diamonds still a girl’s best friend? Not for Quincy native and 1972 Norwell High School graduate Gail Copus Spann, who prefers raw minerals dug out of the earth to cut and polished gemstones. With her husband, Jim Spann, she has built a collection of 11,500 mineral specimens, many on loan to major museums – including David Friend Hall, a spectacular new mineral gallery on the third floor of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Conn.

“People have seen our collection and told me, ‘You could cut that crystal into a bunch of gemstones,’ and I’m appalled. I’d rather keep what nature made,” Gail Copus Spann said.

Growing up in Quincy, she collected pennies, shells and troll dolls. Decades later, living in Rockwall, Texas, she and her husband have become avid mineral collectors.

“In 2005, we were killing time at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, waiting for my daughter to get out of work,” Spann said. “As I was looking at the minerals, I thought for sure some of them were made by man because the crystals were so perfect. I was so wrong.” Captivated by the museum’s Wulfenite specimen – which had crystals with beveled edges resembling windowpanes – she researched the mineral online and told her husband, “Hey, honey, you can buy this stuff.” The Spanns acquired their first specimens through online auctions and learned about minerals at monthly meetings of the Mineralogical Association of Dallas, a group of mineral enthusiasts. They attended mineral shows around the world, including the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines Mineral & Gem International Show in France, where they (along with curators of minerals and dealers) were filmed in June for a documentary about this annual show.

Her biggest bargains to date are the quartz clusters she found at the East Coast Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show at the Eastern States Exposition (The Big E) in West Springfield.

“The dealer had bought another dealer’s entire collection, but didn’t remove the old price tags, which were 35 years old,” she explained. “I bought six small quartz clusters for $8 each. And I love them just as much as pieces that cost much more.” Digging and mining have added to the fun, she said.

“We have crawled underground and on the top of mountains. In May 2017, we were digging smoky and amethyst quartz scepters at Hallelujah Junction Mine, near Reno, Nevada.” To display their growing collection, the Spanns built a 9,000 square-foot addition to their house, which sits on 15 acres in the Texas countryside north of Dallas.

“I gave up my pottery studio so we could add seven more cabinets. We now have 70. But I’m keeping my painting studio upstairs,” she said. And they’re keeping their 22 pets, which include pot-bellied pigs, standard poodles, cats and parrots.

Spann, an artist, started her career working at a gallery in the Hanover Mall. She moved to Texas in 1978 and opened an art gallery in Houston, which she ran for 28 years.

Today, she paints watercolors of minerals in her collection and serves on boards involved with the mineral world, including the Board of Directors of the Mineralogical Record Magazine, which she chairs, and the mineral advisory board at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven. She and Jim were involved with the design of the mineral hall at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, where 80 mineral specimens from the Spann’s collection are displayed.

On view in the mineral hall at the Harvard University Museum of Natural History in Cambridge is a Kesterite specimen from China donated by the Spanns. But the best place in New England to see pieces from the Spann’s mineral collection is David Friend Hall at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, which opened last October to mark the museum’s 150th anniversary.

David Friend Hall is named for Boston resident and Yale alumnus David Friend, a lifelong mineral collector who donated $4 million for the hall. Located on the third floor of the museum, it showcases several large pieces purchased specifically for new gallery and more than 150 specimens on loan from private collectors – including 115 pieces from Gail and Jim Spann. Eighty-two of the Spann’s pieces are miniatures. Others include a 5-inch tall bournonite, a dull gray mineral that excites the mineral connoisseur, which is located next to an eye-catching green fluorite sprinkled with gold-colored pyrite. Professionally backlit and spotlighted, the specimens sparkle in the dark gallery.

“I love David Friend Hall,” she said. “It gives you a feeling of entering a cave of mystery. The big pieces are awe-inspiring. You can see different colors, textures and shapes. And because of the pieces on loan, you are seeing contemporary minerals – minerals that came out of the ground 1½ years ago. Most museum specimens were unearthed decades ago.” Although large, high-quality mineral specimens cost thousands of dollars, smaller pieces can be purchased for much less – such as the Spann’s $50 fluorite miniature and $57 copper miniature, both on display in David Friend Hall.

“There’s no snobbery in mineral collecting, she said. “We know billionaires who collect and schoolteachers who collect. It’s about the rock – sharing the love of the science and the beauty.”